The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is co-sponsoring a new international platform for religious leaders.
Ahead of the G20 intergovernmental forum in Indonesia from 15–16 November, a coalition of the world’s major religions will gather in Bali from 2–3 November. Known as the ‘R20’, the group’s aim is to give a unique global platform through which religious leaders from every faith and nation can express their concerns and voice shared moral and spiritual values.
The Nadhlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest Muslim organisation with an estimated 120 million followers, will host the event. Unlike many Muslim organisations and institutions across the Muslim world, NU is completely independent of any government control: a purely autonomous religious civil society organisation.
The World Evangelical Alliance, which represents 600 million Protestants in 143 countries, is also a co-sponsor of the conference, which will be addressed by Archbishop Thomas Schirrmacher, the Secretary General of the WEA.
The underlying conviction is that the issues to be addressed by the G20 summit, which President Putin and President Zelensky of Ukraine are reported to be attending, cannot be fully or finally resolved by politics or economics alone. Organisers hope it will counter the global narrative and agenda which they say is currently controlled by political leadership, big corporations, some economic think tanks or some extremist and terrorist groups.
And ‘one of the primary agendas is to quell the ideas of radical Islam and extremism,’ said Hadza Min Fadhli R, an Indonesian Islamic scholar.
Participants include the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, where Muslims constitute around 88% of the population, the King of Cambodia, and the Secretary General of the Muslim World League from Saudi Arabia. Anglican invitees include the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Antony Poggo from South Sudan, and the Primate of Nigeria Henry Ndukuba (see photo), a leading member of the orthodox Anglican movement GAFCON.
